


Dangerous

by Snagglefanged



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Loss, M/M, Sad Ending, Sasuke has Goals, Suigetsu has Feelings, Unrequited Love, this isn't ending happily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 00:58:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15061586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snagglefanged/pseuds/Snagglefanged
Summary: Sasuke is dangerous in ways Suigetsu had never expected, not just in ways he had. (What's a boy from Kiri doing trying to remember how to hope, anyway?)





	Dangerous

Uchiha are dangerous.

Everyone knows that. Suigetsu has known it since he was very small, when he used to hear his elders speaking of shinobi they'd faced in battle. There had always been the thought that one day, he too might have to face the forces of another village, and of all the shinobi in Konoha, the Uchiha are renowned for a reason.

_Mind-twisters. Blood-eyed kekkei genkai-wielding killers. The knife hidden beneath those soft Konoha smiles._

_Isn't that why their village keeps them close? To deploy them only when needed, so their enemies never get used to fighting them in lesser conflicts?_

The way people speak of them, they must be as terrible as the Kaguya clan, and everybody knows what happened to  _them_. Everybody knows how the Kaguya had snapped one day, attacked their own village, and been obliterated in one mad frenzy of slaughter and a pile of corpses. Everybody knows how the suspicion deepens after that, for clans who are a bit  _different_ , a little strange, with abilities most don't have.

(They don't speak of the part where almost no Kaguya even  _had_  that terrifying kekkei genkai of theirs - Suigetsu has to work that out later on his own.)

He's still young when the news filters through the nations, that the dangerous Uchiha, too, are gone, that one of them had snapped and slaughtered the rest. At the time, all this means for Suigetsu is that lessons on how to fight Uchiha become a matter of much lower priority.

Hōzuki are dangerous too, but their numbers are dwindling. In the village of Kirigakure, there are only two Hōzuki ninja, from the day Suigetsu attains his genin status until -

\- until there is only one, until Suigetsu is a boy alone, a fearsome prodigy with a bright future and a sorrowful past.

That bright future is a dream, and the dream ends suddenly, as he is dragged away in an act of malice and greed, by a man Konoha just couldn't seem to kill.

After that, there is only pain, and fear, and degradation, and an ever-dwindling hope of escape, of going home and proving that he hadn't run away like so many others. But the more time passes, the less they'll believe it, and the more Suigetsu's thoughts of escape become the desperate scrabbling of a caged animal instead of the plans of a Kirigakure shinobi.

Everything he is or could have been is dissolving.

And yet, strangely enough, that's when the name  _Uchiha_  comes back into his awareness.

Uchiha Sasuke.

The next prospective sacrifice to Orochimaru's vanity, here on some doomed quest of his own.

The first time Suigetsu glimpses him, Uchiha Sasuke is trailing behind Orochimaru on his very own guided tour, and Suigetsu despises him instantly. It's that snotty haughty look of his, and the way he can walk around so freely. It's the way you can just  _tell_  that no scalpel or syringe has touched his flesh. The snooty bastard probably even has his own room, like this is some resort vacation for him.

But the first time Uchiha Sasuke speaks to him... ah, that's a different story. He doesn't say much, but every word he does say drops from his lips like it's divine truth, like his will alone will force it into being. There's a promise, there, to release Suigetsu someday - not now, it seems, but one day in the future, and this is such a dizzying and frustrating mix of feelings, so Suigetsu finds he can't say much himself in return.

Uchiha Sasuke is dangerous. He can make a captive think of hope again, and hope cuts deeper than blades.

Oh, he's clearly dangerous in other ways too, but Suigetsu's used to those. Powerful, deadly, determined? Those are fine. Inspiring? That one's more of a problem.

When Sasuke keeps his promise, Suigetsu is finally free of all the things he'd endured, and he has a chance to live again. But he _owes_ Sasuke, no matter how he might claim otherwise. He knows it. And with Sasuke around, he finds himself thinking that maybe the world can change. Maybe all of those terrible things will never happen again.

All Suigetsu has to do, to see that new world, is to make sure Sasuke survives long enough to get there. For a hope like that, he'll put himself and his blade on the line more times than he'd ever thought of risking himself again. For a hope like that, for someone who can turn even those _other_ two into companions Suigetsu can slowly and begrudgingly come to trust... he can feel something that must be a little bit like love.

There's respect, of course, where merited, and Sasuke's power is impressive, but there's always something more there, something that draws all three of them in. When Suigetsu snaps at Karin, needles at her, gets in her way, he's not doing it purely for its own sake; she cannot be allowed to worm her way into Sasuke's heart and convince him to drive Suigetsu away.

But the day comes, far too quickly, where even risking life and limb for Sasuke isn't enough, if one can't keep up with him. Buried under masonry, Suigetsu doesn't realise until it's too late that Sasuke is gone.

He'll have plenty of time to think about it, though, locked up in a samurai cell.

Uchiha Sasuke is dangerous, in ways Suigetsu has learned to his cost; he can make you believe in him, share his goals, defend his life, and then he can simply... leave.

All that time, though, dulls the anger - Suigetsu goes from rage, to bitterness, to despair, and then to something that resembles forgiveness in the right light. He's from Kirigakure, after all. A pragmatic choice, prioritising a mission over one's team, isn't an alien thought. He'd known from the beginning that Sasuke had been driven by goals that dominated his life. He'd watched Sasuke grow more willing to act harshly for those goals. This is simply one step further.

Even if it hurts more than Suigetsu had expected.

There's still hope, though. All he has to do is get out, show his strength, and they'll be a team again. Sasuke will need them all, soon enough.

An escape, a war, a scroll, and there's Sasuke again, but he does something - or rather, _un_ does something, that Suigetsu had never even dreamed he might.

Orochimaru is back, as perilous as ever, and due to be more so once his arms are returned to him.

But Sasuke is strong enough to quell him, and that will have to do for now.

In the end, Suigetsu is there to hear the tales of the Uchiha as they once had been. In the end, Suigetsu fights on a battlefield he'd wanted to avoid, to try to get to Sasuke in his hour of need. In the end -

\- he watches Sasuke rejoin the fight, and can only wait again, and hope.

He and Karin, for all their arguments, must be feeling much the same as one another right now. Jūgo too, probably, Suigetsu thinks, though _he_ at least has had a greater chance to help Sasuke in this war, up until now, when none of them can do so.

The dream, when it comes, is devastating. Not because it lacks anything, oh no, it's perfect in every detail, but when the Infinite Tsukuyomi is broken, reality comes flooding back, and everything he's ever lost is gone again.

Including Sasuke, who is somewhere else entirely. He can't help any of them now, and there is nowhere left to go save the one place Suigetsu had hoped never to see again.

News comes to them slowly. Sasuke, pardoned - but no pardon for Taka, no voices to speak for them, no hero friends to defend them -, free, out to travel the world.

He does not come for them. When at last they see him again, it will not be for long, and he will be about some other goal entirely.

Sasuke is dangerous. He can win your hopes, your respect, your _love_ -

\- and you will always watch as he walks away.


End file.
